Another emergency for Myanmar

We're in the middle of floods. The worst for 30 years. But here in Yangon they feel so far away. Except for the thousands of students calling for donations on the streets - a legacy perhaps of a distrust that the government will help those suffering.

I've just come back from Tatkon, where I was launching our first emergency radio show with the state broadcaster. It's a far-cry from Nargis, when I still remember that meagre two line article on the back page of the New Light highlight that there might be 50 kilometre per hour winds. They ended up being 240kph. 

It's hard not to feel flashbacks to it. Yet, standing with a team of state broadcasters, interviewing key experts to give life-saving information out to communities, it felt like here was the cycle of my time in Myanmar, coming full circle. The desire I felt then to publish where wells were in Yangon, so that people might find them, I feel that more strongly now. More concretely. I've spent two and a half years working towards helping the government, the media and the humanitarian community better prepare for these kinds of events. Or rather, to better prepare to talk to the people who are impacted, to tell them that help is on its way, but that while they wait, they can do things to make themselves and their families safer. We're not all there yet. But at least the state broadcaster is willing to put out a programme at every news bulletin for the communities. And atleast the international community is talking with me - and letting us interview them. And at least -- at the very least -- the government - scared by Nargis, tempered by the changes and transitions of the last three years - is ready to see that information is not only dangerous, but might actually be life-saving. And for that, I am so grateful.